Caster’s comeback quickens

Updated: September 10, 2010

Caster Semenya, our world 800-metre champion, on Thursday cast aside a momentary lapse of form 10 days ago to signal loud and clear to her rivals that she’ll be in contention for top honours at next month’s Commonwealth Games in India.

Running at a low-key meeting, the Notturna di Milano meeting in Milan, Italy, Caster clocked her quickest time since being cleared to compete again on July 6 this year.

She ran 1min 58.16sec, improving on her previous best of 1:59.65 set in Brussels, Belgium last month.

Semenya, cleared by track and field’s governing body, the IAAF to run again after 11 months on the sideline due to gender speculation had run the slowest race of her comeback 10 days ago when she could only run 2:07 for ninth spot at the Palio della Quercia meeting, also in Italy.

But Thursday night’s time shows the 19-year-old is certainly back on track to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games starting in New Delhi on October 3.

This was her last race before the Commonwealth and she’ll rest a lot easier as she returns home to fine-tune her training for India

Associated Press reports that Semenya spent most of the race in second place, but overtook Hind Dehiba of France on the back straight before winning.

“I feel pretty happy,” Semenya said. “I wasn’t expecting a fast race. But my coach told me to run my own race, even if it was fast. We have been looking to run 1:58 and “I’m going home and will just do some basic training sessions,” Semenya said. “It is the same training as the last few weeks and I will try to keep doing the same times.”

“I’m happy, I felt good,” Pistorious said. “I kept my speed up to the end and I couldn’t have asked for a better end to the season than that. I’ve run two races at 46.0, so I’ve just got to get a good base in preseason and work hard toward 45.0.”